Features

Ten Minutes with Maura Sheehy from Maura's Cottage Flowers

You
offer a unique service in which your flowers are home grown, do
brides visit the gardens to choose what flowers they want for their
wedding day?Yes,
a visit can be very beneficial as it gives a bride the opportunity to
see exactly what is available and gives them a general sense of my
style. I
offer a free consultation and almost all my brides have availed of a
visit to the garden. After a walk in the garden they are invited into
the workshop where they can have a cuppa which gives us time to sit
down and discuss what will be needed and other preferences for the
big day. I love this opportunity as it gives me the chance to get to
know my client a little bit better and means that I will be able to
add that personal touch to the flowers. Usually the bride to be
is accompanied by her fiance or family members or friends and they
seem to enjoy the relaxed atmosphere where they can browse through
books and photos for inspiration.

Generally,
I find that after a visit brides feel content that they can trust me
to deliver the flowers of their dreams and I love to think that I can
take some of the pressure off them. The fact that the flowers are
home grown allows the unique opportunity for the bride to hand pick
the blooms she wants in her bouquet a day or two before the
wedding,I love
that they can in essence design their own bouquet. When you are
creating wedding flowers you re
also creating memories, these flowers will be looked at for years to
come in photos and DVDs, I feel very strongly that a bride should
have the biggest say in their wedding flowers and this way the brides
personality will be truly reflected in the flowers.

What
do you specialise in?I
specialise in seasonal and sustainable country flowers, they tend to
suit rustic and vintage themed weddings. I love to grow unusual
varieties that have good scent and have that wild, natural, rustic
charm to them. I like the fact that I can provide an alternative for
brides. Each bridal bouquet is unique and even if I am asked to
replicate a particular bouquet from my portfolio I will accommodate
the request to a certain degree but it will inevitably have a number
of subtle differences making it similar but unique to the bride.By
growing a huge array of flowers a bride is ensured of diversity in
both varieties and colour range.

What
do you think helps you stand out compared to more traditional
florists?I am
an artisan flower grower and offer a bespoke service, my flowers have
that just picked from the garden look as opposed to more formal
wedding flowers and are quite distinctive and very natural looking,
this loose natural style offers an alternative. I choose to do a
limited number of weddings a year to ensure a high level of personal
service to every bride in the run up to and on the wedding day. I
include herbs, seed heads,
berries and grasses into buttonholes and bouquets and all these
elements mean that the flowers stand out as being very different. A
lot of the flowers I grow are not available through traditionalist
florists as some flowers do not travel well, indeed it is their
delicacy and lacy blooms that often end up stealing the show. Also,
I can grow specific flowers on request for brides if time allows. I
feel that freshly cut flowers that have practically no carbon
footprint (there is little or no waste as we use minimal packaging as
the flowers are normally handed over directly to the customer) along
with the idea of enhancing the local biodiversity by providing food
for bees, birds and butterflies holds great appeal to my customers
and are added features to the beautiful flowers they purchase.
Wedding couples are constantly seeking ways to make their wedding
different and the fact that the flowers look so distinctive they
become a talking point on the day.Why
are you passionate about growing eco-friendly, natural flowers to use
in your work?Cut
flowers bring life to any occasion, they evoke happy memories of
bygone times and are known to improve our emotional well being. They
are associated with delight, gratitude, love, appreciation and create
heightened feelings of life satisfaction. There is no reason
why we cannot organically grow flowers here, we have a climate
that suits the growing conditions needed for flower production
and people are now becoming more curious about issues such as the
origin of the flowers, carbon footprint and air miles. There is
genuine concern and people are looking for an alternative so there is
a market for them. I
feel very fortunate, I love my work, and I am part of a growing
movement of Irish growers seeking to make a small difference in
Ireland by providing fresh chemical-free flower. My appetite for
knowledge about growing and arranging flowers organically is huge and
I love sharing this passion with my customers. Its easy to feel
passionate about something you love so much, I suppose you wouldnt
succeed in this business unless you absolutely loved it, it may look
wonderfully romantic but in reality is labour and time intensive with
6am starts and sometimes finish at 11pm (when it gets dark!) in the
height of the season but it can be a very satisfying kind of
tiredness One
motto I go by is Life is too short to always have clean
fingernails, I wouldn’t swap my work for anything.

What
trends are you seeing brides go for when it comes to their wedding
day and do you find it challenging?I
find that in general brides that like my flowers tend to have a
lovely laid back type of personality and always have a relaxed
attitude towards their wedding, they are attracted to the natural
flowers because they reflect their own personalities. Another
trend is that they are genuinely interested in sourcing Irish grown
flowers and love that they are chemical free. Edible flowers are
making a huge comeback and most brides ask for the cake table to have
flowers placed on it as well as being used for cake decoration.They
are looking to keep everything as laid back as possible but do like
to have their own stamp on things to make it that bit
different.

Most
of them are not afraid to break with tradition in order to suit
themselves, this might mean replacing bouquets with wrist corsages or
having more flower girls instead of bridesmaids. Keeping everything
real and thinking of ways that give special meaning to the day, an
example of this would be a memory vase in remembrance of important
family members whose absence will be felt on the day.Colours
that are still strong are apricots, blush and berry colours like
burgundy and I have noticed a few brides opting for vibrant colours
for their shoes.